Timothy Burke has some interesting thoughts about the College of the Atlantic, which represents a real effort to build interdisciplinarity on an institutional level. “Interdisciplinary” is the buzzword of the moment in large swathes of academia, and the College of the Atlantic, which doesn’t have departments and works very hard to make connections between disciplines,… Continue reading Interdisciplinarity
Category: Academia
Novels of Science
Writing in Scientific American, Mark Alpert argues that we need more novels about science: A good work of fiction can convey the smells of a laboratory, the colors of a dissected heart, the anxieties of a chemist and the joys of an astronomer–all the illuminating particulars that you won’t find in a peer-reviewed article in… Continue reading Novels of Science
Put Down the Laser Pointer
For all the ranting people do about the evils of PowerPoint, it seems to me that people are missing the one bit of technology that is most responsible for incomprehensible presentations in science: the laser pointer. Having watched a bunch of student talks last week, I was reminded once again of just how useless laser… Continue reading Put Down the Laser Pointer
On the Bitterness of Academics
Jake Young points to a Bloggingheads conversation between Dan Drezner and Megan McArdle about, among other things, whether academics are bitter and why. This mostly comes out of a post Megan wrote (link is a leap of faith– the site is down as I type this), and serves as a lead-in to a discussion of… Continue reading On the Bitterness of Academics
Dorky Poll: Non-Abelian Sciences
I’m going to be busy all day (more or less) at the Steinmetz Symposium, listening to talks about the fantastic things our students have been doing with their research projects. So it’s going to be a “talk among yourselves” day here at Uncertain Principles, for the most part. It’s been a little while since I… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Non-Abelian Sciences
Sigma Xi Film Festival: Short Films About Water
Speaking (as we were) of pro-science film festivals, Sigma Xi (the scientific research honor society– think Phi Beta Kappa for science nerds) is announcing a student film competition: In conjunction with a year-long focus on the issue of water, Sigma Xi is sponsoring a competition for three-minute student films on aspects of this precious and… Continue reading Sigma Xi Film Festival: Short Films About Water
Familiarity and Lies-to-Children
One of the interesting things to come out of the switch to Matter & Interactions for our intro classes has been some discussion among my colleagues of how the books treat specific topics. A couple of people have raised concerns that the coverage of certain topics is different from the traditional presentation, in a way… Continue reading Familiarity and Lies-to-Children
Scientists Don’t Have to Do Everything Themselves
The Mad Biologist, like 80% of ScienceBlogs, is mad at Chris Mooney: Here’s the problem: you keep coming to evolutionary biologists with a problem (the perception of evolutionary biology), and you don’t have a solution. Do you think there’s a single evolutionary biologist who is happy with public opinion regarding evolution and creationism? But you’re… Continue reading Scientists Don’t Have to Do Everything Themselves
A Flock of Dodos
Randy Olson’s movie A Flock of Dodos comes up again and again in the course of arguments about public communication of science, but I had never gotten around to seeing it. I finally put it on the Netflix queue, and ended up watching it last night. For those who have been living in caves and… Continue reading A Flock of Dodos
Physics to Finance
We had a talk yesterday at lunchtime from an alumnus who graduated with a physics degree, got a Ph.D. in Physics, did a couple of post-docs, and then decided to give academia a miss, and went to Wall Street where he’s been a financial analyst for the last 12 years. He talked, mostly for the… Continue reading Physics to Finance